


Crossed Sigils

by TUNiU



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Holding Hands, In-Jokes, Run-On Sentences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 21:35:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: Our angel and demon realize that the combined forces of Heaven and Hell will have a fit once they realize just who is responsible for thwarting the apocalypse. So they take precautions 11 years early.





	Crossed Sigils

**Author's Note:**

> I totally wanted to make this a sexual relationship. But the characters just would not go that route. Maybe in a part 2.
> 
> For right now, this is what I have and i'm marking it complete.

In 1458, a man named Abramelin taught his son Lamech how to evoke and bind the 12 dukes of Hell. His work was collected in a book called The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.

In 1582, John Dee, Queen Elizabeth the First's scholar magician, wrote De Heptarchia Mystica a guide to summoning angels. In this book, he painstakingly detailed all the runes, ingredients and language needed to summon an angel from heaven and bind that celestial entity to the caster's will.

By a striking coincidence, both books lived for many decades side by side on a shelf at A. Z. Fell and Co., a rare book seller in Soho.

Starting in 2008 AD, a layperson could be forgiven for thinking that the Co, of A. Z. Fell and Co. referred to a tall lanky gentlemen who could always be seen lounging on the sofa and conversing with the proprietor. However, for angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley, 2008 AD was the start of the end of the world.

"Of course there is one tiny little problem with us helping raise the Antichrist to not be evil," Crowley said morosely.

Aziraphale hummed questioningly. He was still mentally stuck on his Freudian slip of "well, I'll be damned".

"When the forces of Heaven and Hell finally rise up only to be halted by an 11 year old boy who is no longer interested in the apocalypse, they're going to be looking for someone," and here Crowley waggled his finger between the both of them, "to blame. And they won't care about our eternal scorecards. At the very least it will be eternally excruciatingly painful."

Aziraphale frowned.

At that moment, a small earthquake trembled through the bookstore. A very small earthquake. Felt only by the bookstore and by none of the rest of Soho or indeed by any global earthquake monitoring stations.

The shelves rattled and two books near the central support column thumped to the floor. The shaking of the floor made them slide a few inches over until they knocked into Crowley's snakeskin boots. Then the earthquake stopped as suddenly as it had come.

"Oh no," Azirphale cried out. Those books were priceless first editions. All the books in his store were priceless, which is why he made a habit of never selling any.

Crowley bent down and picked the books up. He read the titles and whistled impressed. "You could do a lot of damage with these," he commented.

"Oh I do hope the covers weren't scratched too badly."

"Nevermind that," Crowley exclaimed. "Why do you have books on how to bind and summon angels and demons?"

Aziraphale sputtered, "they're of historical im...port...ance..." he trailed off as divine inspiration flooded his mind.

"What's that look for?"

Aziraphale snatched the books out of Crowley's lap and paged through them. He felt his heart race as he examined the rituals and symbols in each book. The etheric powers called were balanced horrifically. These were utterly useless to any human but they gave him confidence in his idea.

"That face, I know that face. That's the face you give me when I find you visiting a country in the middle of a war for a lunch snack."

The angel gently closed the books and held them on his knees. "What if they couldn't punish us?" he asked.

"Oeghn, but they can," the demon countered.

Aziraphale shimmied in glee. "Not if we're under a binding."

Crowley nodded. "Yup," he squeaked. "You've gone insane," he added gleefully.

"Listen, if I bind you to my will ("you what?") AND you bind me to yours, we physically can't be punished for anything we do. It's in the rules of the summoning."

Crowley scoffed.

"It will work," Aziraphale proclaimed.

"I know it will work, but you would be binding yourself to my will. An angel under the control of a demon."

"You're not worried about being under my control?"

"Oh, please. You're the nicest person I know."

The angel smiled beatifically. "Thank you. And anyways, you would never hurt me."

Crowley rubbed his knuckles against his lips as he considered Aziraphale. "Fine!" he said at last. He dug in his empty pocket for a coin that miracled into existence as he reached for it. "Call it," he said.

"Heads."

Crowley flicked the coin into the air where it spun an improbable number of times before landing in his palm. He smacked it over to his other hand and looked. "Tails, I'll go first." He hadn't even cheated.

Aziraphale took a moment to place the books back on the shelves. He then sat next to Crowley on the sofa. "We'll have to phrase the commands properly, of course."

"Of course," the demon mocked. He immediately stood up and paced the few steps allowed in the small space. He stretched and bounced on his toes for a moment. Finally, he turned to the angel. "Give me your arm," he commanded.

The angel did.

"No, the other arm."

Aziraphale lifted his left arm. Crowley pushed up the cream sleeves until he got access to the bony wrist. "This might hurt," he said.

He brought his right finger to his tongue, igniting it with a spark. Holding Aziraphale's hand steady, he wrote a series of burning sigils. The angel flinched and whimpered slightly but held still. The flaming sigils looped all around the angel's wrist until they closed into a glowing bracelet. Aziraphale sighed when the sigil's command took hold of him. He sat placidly, blank, an empty vessel for Crowley's command. Crowley hated it. He waved a hand in front of Aziraphale's face with no response.

"Principality Aziraphale, I command you to only act in accordance with your own will," he intoned.

The angel flinched. "Oh."

Immediately Crowley kneeled in front of him, his hands on the other man's knees. "Are you okay? Do you need me to strike it out?" He held his still aflame finger over Aziraphale's wrist, ready to destroy the sigils.

"No, no. I'm fine." He flexed his left hand and stared at the binding mark. The sigils had burned into his skin and looked so much like a blackened char marks in wood. Any discomfort quickly faded. "Tell me to do something I don't want to," he requested.

"Sell me your Unrighteous Bible for a quid."

"Good heavens no. Oh good, it worked."

"Oegh, you, wha, hng," Crowley sputtered, "you had doubts?"

"Nevermind that, it worked. Now it's your turn."

They switched seats. Crowley rolled up the sleeve on his right arm. Aziraphale took up Crowley's right hand with his left, and with his right he reached behind his back, slipping into the etheric plane where his wings rested. He plucked a loose feather and used it as a quill to draw onto Crowley's skin. The sigil glowed white and Crowley twisted about in pain.

"Almost done." The sigil smoked until it met itself in a circle, then it settled and turned black. "Demon Crawly, known as Crowley, I command you to only act in accordance with your own will."

Crowley shivered and flicked his tongue out. "It's all sort of warm and..." he waggled his tongue like it had a bad taste on it.

"...cozy?" Aziraphale added.

"Eugh, cozy like tartan moth balls."

"Rude."

"Meh."

And so it was in the year 2008 AD an angel and a demon bound each other under the rules of summoning. This was very imperative to their future survival, for any party summoned and bound to a caster's will cannot be punished for anything done while under the binding because they are quite literally under someone else's control.

The punishment just slides off like water off a...thing that water slides off of.

Time passed. The boy known as Warlock Dowling and who everyone believed also carried the titles the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness slowly grew up. Aziraphale was the Dowling family gardener, though he knew nothing about plants, and Crowley was the Dowling family nanny, because she'd always loved children from the Beginning. Together they taught the values of right (Aziraphale) and wrong (Crowley), and how they applied vis a vis not starting the Apocalypse and destroying the world, to Warlock, who, through a ridiculous miscommunication at his birthing hospital involving two other newborn baby boys, was not actually the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness.

Now it was 2019, it was 7 days past the 11th birthday of the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness, correctly known as Adam Young--the day after the day on which he should have destroyed the world, because it turned out Adam Young did not want to destroy the world even without the teachings of good and evil provided by an angel and a demon.

It was on this, the seventh day, a Sunday, that the world settled down. Things that were previously destroyed were restored almost perfectly…

<<Ducks, they're what water slides off of!>>

Crowley breathed a sigh of relief as he sat in the driver seat of his Bentley. His car sound system now had a bluetooth connection, and he was eager to see if the songs on his iPhone would metamorphose into Best of Queen. Well he could always resync the songs if they did. He drove off towards Berkeley Square to meet with Aziraphale. Said angel was busy examining his bookshop for any flaws in the recreation, but other than a priceless first edition set of boys adventure novels courtesy of Adam, everything was the way it should be.

It was when Crowley and Aziraphale met at a park to trade news on the failed apocalypse that their 11 year old binding pact was finally put to the test. Heaven and Hell were massively displeased with their agents and kidnapped them to suffer executions.

The holy water glistened with a beatific shine in the porcelain tub. Crowley stared at his bath as the denizens of hell screamed and shouted for his punishment. Though his hands were chained, he still obsessively rubbed the sigils on his wrist. This would be one heaven of a test for the rules of binding. He must have been taking too long because Hastur came up behind him and pushed. Crowley flailed for balance, but his chains stopped his hands, and he fell into the tub with a great splash. At first, the water was cooling as water should be, then the holiness bit through. It fizzed on his skin, and Crowley screamed underwater. But that's all it did. Fizz. Harmlessly. Once Crowley gathered his wits enough to realize he was not extinct, he righted himself and sat up. The water felt effervescent, like he was sitting in a tub of seltzer. It tickled.

He spat out a small stream of water with an insouciance he did not feel. He smiled at Beelzebub. The knight of hell quickly had him removed from the tub, with much grumbling by the demons, whom the holy water did affect, and tossed up the escalator still soaking wet.

And so he lay on a bench in Berkeley Square, drying in the sun, waiting and hoping Aziraphale would return. Crowley's hair was still dripping when Aziraphale walked nervously up.

The angel took one look at the demon sunning himself, and gasped. "No!" He reached out and touched the damp clothes, feeling the holiness. He pulled up on Crowley's waistcoat until the demon stood in front of him and hugged him, wrapping his arms tight around his shoulders.

"Steady on," Crowley muttered. He caught a whiff off Aziraphale's clothes. Hellfire. Immediately his own arms embraced the angel. Almost at the same time, they miracled each other's clothes pristine.

Aziraphale pulled back first, he dropped his hands down suddenly. "Well, yes, I'm very pleased that you're still...here."

"You too."

"Oh! I can't believe they did this, Heaven and Hell working together for the first time in 6000 years, just to...to..." Aziraphale trailed off and fell back to sit on the bench, disheartened.

"Kill us?" Crowley added

"Indeed."

He sat next to him. "I don't think this will be the last time they do. I think the next time will be all of us against all of them."

"You mean Heaven and Hell against Humanity."

"Oegh, it was a human who really stopped Armageddon, we were just there at the end to give a 5 second pep talk."

"You realize what this means don't you?"

Crowley grabbed onto Aziraphale's hand so that their wrists crossed, their sigils touching. "We can never get rid of these," he said.

Aziraphale twisted his fingers so his hand was interwoven with Crowley's. "I don't mind," he said shyly.

Crowley smiled softly. "Do you want to get dinner at the Ritz? My treat?"

"The Ritz can wait. I think I'd like to sit here and hold your hand for a while longer."

The angel and the demon sat holding hands for a long time. They had never done it before and they quite liked it.


End file.
